THG Fanfiction- Through Peeta's Blue Eyes

Chapter One

A/N: All characters belong to the ever-awesome Suzanne Collins! This is just a fanfiction of "The Hunger Games". Do note that some dialogues will be changed or summarised, because I feel that it'd be really boring if I put the dialogue EXACTLY as it is in the book... no complaints about that, please! Some parts will not be included out of necessity. 

  I woke up to a rather unusual sound this morning.

  Silence.

  No miner’s rough boots tramping along the dusty pathways to work, no women trudging along the streets crying out in thin voices, meager wares in hand. Well, it’s the eighth of May- reaping day- might as well sleep in. Why bother to get up early when all that day held was possible death anyway?

  Not even the sound of the birds’ cheerful chirrups are audible. That’s understandable, I guess.

  They stopped chirping in District Twelve all too long ago.

  I roll out of my hard bed and struggle into my clothes, when my eyes spy a small, lithe figure heading in the direction of the Meadow. It pulls the corners of my mouth upward into a slight smile. How well I know that long, black braid.

  Katniss Everdeen’s going hunting again.

  The sight of her brings back pleasant memories to my mind of the day I first saw her, in that red plaid dress with her hair in two cute braids instead of one. She wasn’t much to look at, a small, skinny little thing with staring grey eyes, but when she sang…

  Shaking my head, I muse on such pleasant recollections as I do up my last button.    

  When I’m done, it’s time to head to work. Pushing open my bedroom door, careful not to wake my sleeping brother, I make my way to the bakery kitchen. There I’m greeted by a sound blow on the head with what appears to be a large wooden spoon.

  “You’re late,” snarls my mother, wiping the spoon on her stained apron. I wince and massage the bruise. Love you too, mum. She tosses me the icing bag and points her meaty finger at the table, where some cakes are standing, ready to be iced. 

  “Do those, and then get the muffins ready,” she orders, waving the spoon about. Specks of spit fly from her lips as she talks, putting the innocent cakes in danger of contamination.  

  “Understood?” she asks, rapping the spoon on the table. Without waiting for an answer, she whacks me upside the head for the second time this morning, and what’s possibly the millionth time this year. Rubbing the sore spot, I immediately bend over my task, not daring to look her in the eye.

  “Get going, you lazy good-for-nothing! Honestly, all the work I do in this house, and for what? My idiot husband and three ungrateful, stupid brats…” Her shrill voice trails off into the distance as she mounts the rickety stairs, screaming for my brothers.

  I go back to decorating the cakes, concentrating on letting the icing form beautiful swirls, patterns, pictures. Flowers blossom under my fingers, intricate lacey patterns criss-cross the spongy surface of my unconventional canvas. The work absorbs me, and for those few minutes, I’m happy, forgetting the ache in my head, the money we still have to earn before we can afford to have a decent meal for once, the reaping…

  The reaping. In an instant, all my lightheartedness vanishes. I clutch the icing bag tighter, ruining the cake. Groaning, I quickly cover it up. Well, that’s the last of them. Leaning back and wiping my forehead, I survey my handiwork. Sadly, that one spoiled cake ruins the overall effect.

  Really, the reaping whittles away the lives of hundreds of people, spoils what could be just another comparatively pleasant day in the year, and now it has to come and ruin my cakes too?